


heaven only knows where you are now

by leeknowcity



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Chan is new to a lot of things, First Meetings, Fluff and Angst, M/M, May make you cry, but Minho makes them so easy, dancing on the beach, late night encounters, may get heated, minchan, music student Chan, peak soulmate culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:13:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27161633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leeknowcity/pseuds/leeknowcity
Summary: Chan will always remember what it was like to love Minho, even when all he had now was his ghost.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Lee Minho | Lee Know
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23





	heaven only knows where you are now

Chan remembers _seeing_ Minho for the first time, and perhaps, finding out just what it meant to fall in love at first sight. 

If there was something he remembered from chemistry 101, it was that the seat beside him in the laboratory was always empty, except for the one morning it was not.

Chan pulled the earphones out of his ears, cocking his head to the left in a small bit of confusion as he slowly approached his table by the window at the back of the classroom. He chose the place specifically so he wouldn’t have to demonstrate any of everyone’s favorite, classically enjoyable, phenomenal lab experiment for the class up on the platform, and so he wouldn’t need to sit next to or interact with anyone.

One day Bang Chan decided maybe the first class of the day was something he could get by with his eyes shut, music blasting through his eardrums at full, do not try and talk to me volume, isolated from society like the variable he was supposed to make for his pending investigatory project.

The morning of this day, however, brought a few questions to that.

One was why, when he thought he made it very transparent he wanted nothing to do with a lab partner or… human contact, someone thought his seat was theirs, and seemed to enjoy exploring the wonders of his assigned graduated cylinders.

“Hi… there.”

Chan cleared his throat, politely tapping the mystery student on the shoulder. “I think you thought my seat was yours— holy _fuck_?”

“Oh, hi! No, I’m your new partner. I did some rearranging with my classes for this semester, and they said chemistry would be great. Are you okay?”

Another was why, if the idea of having to sit next to someone for a lethal 2 hours of the world’s worst first period sounded so much more terrible to him than it seemed, he stood there, frozen in place, with his fairly smaller eyes the shape of coasters and his entire body— although he wasn’t very sure what the exact feeling was for this one — like it was on actual _flames_.

“Hello?”

Maybe he deliberately refused to move any part of his body as a sign of protest against someone disrupting his routinely activity. Maybe his leg died on the spot and he chose to play it cool so no one would suspect a thing.

Or maybe, just maybe, he’d made eye contact with his early morning encounter, and needed a few minutes to believe he wasn’t insane and, for a significant amount of time, he did just gaze into the solar system without a rocket ship, without a telescope, aware of the hardwood floor of a school classroom, and knowing pretty well he was conscious. Right?

So, what the fuck? How was literal outer space dancing in this guy’s eyes?

“I’m Minho, by the way. What’s your name?” He said, sticking his hand out for him.

Chan jumped up at the question, snapping out of his trance. He ran his tongue across the back of his teeth, blinking a few times. “Sorry?”

Minho chuckled in an attempt to break the increasingly awkward air. “I’m Minho, your new partner. You are?”

Chan prayed the way his ears flushed dark red would go unnoticed, “Oh! I’m Chan! Bang Chan.” wiping his sweaty palm on the sleeve of his jacket before he took his hand.

Now, there was no way he could confirm it, but the contact sent a gentle shockwave through his bloodstream, generating the kind of power that could speed up his heart rate in less than a minute. Like electricity. Or a chemical reaction.

He tried to steal a glance at him, but he was already staring back. Maybe he was holding some kind of shock pen in his other hand?

Or maybe, he felt it too.

Minho smiled when he shifted in his seat, clearing space for Chan to join him. Chan shoved his earphones into the pocket of his backpack, taking out a notebook and a pen onto the table instead.

If the occasional glances he claimed were directed at the window to his right were actually for the person looking out of it in distraction, seated to its left, he wouldn’t let anyone know about that.

And if there was another thing he remembered from chemistry 101, it was that certain elements, when combined, did create chemical reactions.

For some reason he refused to admit, the odd morning of this day went just a little too quicker than he expected it to. It was a whole two weeks ago, and Chan had not once, stopped thinking about him since.

* * *

Chan remembers _hearing_ Minho for the first time, and realizing the only inspiration he’d ever need was right in front of him.

“So, what are you doing for your October project?”

“Sorry— what?” Chan jumped up in surprise, rubbing at the bags underneath his eyes while he stifled a yawn.

“October project? Mr. Park told us we should start working soon… the deadline’s not too far away anymore.” Changbin replied, grimacing at the lost prawn cracker crumb he picked from Chan’s messy hair and tossing it out onto the field.

“I… I don’t know. God, I haven’t even started. I’m screwed, aren’t I?”

Changbin shook his head from left to right, giving him a painless slap on the shoulder. “Not if you find some inspiration or something soon enough. Besides, you’re Bang Chan, the Lord’s gift to music.” He finished in a singsong voice.

Chan might have been too deprived of sleep, and sunlight, to play along. He pushed a palm against his forehead in frustration, the idea of the not-so-kind deadline beginning to poke endlessly at his skin.

“You’ve got this, Chan. I suggest you get out of your depressing studio for a change tonight, and start from there. Who knows what you can get off of a new environment?” Changbin raised both his eyebrows in reassurance when Chan turned to face him.

“Sound okay?”

“Yeah, I— I’ll do my best.”

“You know you always do.”

The clock ticked at 1:31 am and rang off the walls of a quiet, lonely diner in the middle of the night. Chan sat at an empty booth with his head in his hands, a pencil spinning off the tips of one of them restlessly.

He mindlessly reached for the empty glass across the table with the other one, shoulders slumping down in defeat when no strawberry milkshake poured out.

Honest to God, he would have said it wasn’t so much the complete death of the ability to rhyme the word _you_ with itself 14 times and call it a song as it was the one hundred thoughts that liked to cloud his head and disrupt any burst of motivation from helping him do any work.

For one he would think, ‘do I get to sleep for more than three hours tonight’, and ‘do I finish my 47th unopened draft or is it going to finish itself along with everything else’, and every day at every hour since the several weeks ago it was, ‘how relevant is the boy from the one morning in chemistry to my life and why, God— why on earth can’t I stop thinking about him’.

Chan decided and made it clear, to nobody in particular, that he _could_ write lyrics if he wanted to, and the only reason he couldn’t do so then was because of ‘exterior distractions’. Of course.

So, when the clocked ticked at 1:40 am, and his milkshake glass was empty, and the only writing on his notebook was incoherent scribbles, and a familiar face stood at the table of his booth with a question of his own, he’d also decided these _distractions_ were why he, out of nowhere, simply could not answer like a normal person would.

“Is this seat taken?”

Chan felt the sharp pang to the back of his neck when he snapped his head up faster than he ever did in his life. It was a lot of things.

The warm orange diner fluorescence directly struck his eye line in an intense glare when he looked up, the sudden sound of something, anything, after being in the same place alone for more than three hours immersed in an even more intense mind game of _will he write or will he write_ caught him off guard _,_ and the answer to 98 of his famous ‘external distractions’ for thoughts stood right in front of him.

At the table of a lonely diner. In the middle of the night.

“Chan?”

Chan hadn’t blinked in almost a full 30 seconds his eyes could have dried out on the spot. The heat that spread across his chest at the sound of his name in _that_ voice was something he could not take lightly.

Screw it. Of course, it was one thing.

Finally clearing his throat and allowing a savior amount of tears back into his eyes, he managed to get him in his booth.

“That’s me. And no, this seat’s perfectly open.” He said, motioning to the empty bench across him.

Minho gave him a smile that could have easily stopped his heart from pumping blood throughout his body right there when he took it.

“What— what are you doing here?” Chan asked, clearing the table of his cramming mess.

Minho bit down on the grin on his lips, exhaling a quiet chuckle. “I could ask you the same thing.”

“Oh. Yeah, yeah I am… working on a project for my composition class.”

“In a diner at 1 in the morning?”

“In a diner at 1 in the morning.” Chan laughed. “I might have been struggling in my black hole of a studio.”

Minho placed both of his elbows on top of the table, crossing his hands together just a little over his mouth. He pointed to Chan’s blank notebook and the crumpled pieces of it, pushing his neck in its direction and raising a curious eyebrow to ask.

“How is that going for you?” The corner of his lips rose into a playful smirk.

Chan exhaled, pushing a hand up into his hair. “Not very good, I must say.”

“What are you writing about, anyway?”

“We can write about anything that inspires us…. which is also the problem in itself, because I’m getting zero inspiration from anything.”

“Well, how did you finish your projects before?”

Chan paused to think, a few realizations hitting him all at once with the sudden prompt.

“I- I don’t know. It’s really hard. I’ve written about love, I guess? But I get the same comment every time, that it’s too _general_.”

Minho tilted his head to the side, the hair on his forehead following him. “What about love?”

“That it’s looking at something, or _someone,_ and deciding you love them. I’m not really sure where I go from there.”

“Wait, wait, Chan— what?”

Chan dropped a pencil onto the table. “Also the second problem. I haven’t experienced enough to know _anything_ about it.” He looked Minho in the eye and when he saw he was looking at him too, realized he definitely couldn’t for any longer. All the red in his system raced up to his face faster than it should have.

_“Love, it has no guarantees— which muse, will lay its hands on me?”_

Chan glanced up from his notebook at the sound of the familiar melody. Except it was different, like this— this one sounded like magic, the kind you would only ever hear in fantasy.

_“We said the words, we knocked on wood,”_

If Minho only turned his head back then he would have seen just how far in he pulled some people, and for this one person, the way he was too deep in to get out.

_“And I’m still here waiting to see, what could be,”_

Chan traced his side profile with his eyes, the little parting of his lips gradually turning into a subtle smile as he went over Minho’s jawline, his nose bridge, his long eyelashes— details he would look at forever if he could.

_“What if the closest I get, to the moment is now?”_

And a sound he would listen to forever, if he could.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Minho laughed when he faced him.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re in love with me or something,”

Minho meant it as a joke, but Chan couldn’t get to the punchline.

“Because I don’t know how else to look at you.”

If he noticed the faint pink hue that spread across Minho’s face in the moment, he smiled to himself, and made no mention of it.

“Oh.”

“You sing?”

Minho’s head shot up with a jolt. “Ah, just for fun. I guess I sometimes do it mindlessly.” He chuckled, twirling the tip of his hair with a finger.

Chan told him his voice was beautiful, and he grew too shy to tell him it wasn’t.

They stood right outside the diner window, Chan clutching onto his notebook and Minho stuffing his hands into his pocket. The clock ticked at 2:04 am and rang off the walls of a quiet, but little less lonely diner in the middle of the night.

“Work with me, soon?”

“Why not?”

They stared into each other’s eyes and laughed like they were the only people in the night, which, they might have been, that late in the area.

“Is this goodbye for now?” Chan teased, glancing at the clock in the building behind them.

“Chan,”

“Minho?”

And perhaps, nothing could have prepared Chan for what he was about to hear because he swore his entire system came to a dead stop, and the only thing he could sense for miles was the question playing, repeatedly, through his ears.

“Can I kiss you?”

There was a moment of silence when they locked eyes on the pavement. They said that when you looked at someone that made you happy, your heartbeat synced up with theirs. Chan thought he might have just completely understood that right there.

“Will you mean it?”

Instead of a reply, Chan felt a tug on his shirt, pulling him closer until it stopped and the space between them was so painful he couldn’t hold out any longer.

Minho kissed him back, his grip tight on his shirt and just inches away from his neck. The wind was cold at 2 am but for some reason he couldn’t quite put a finger on yet, Chan only burned like crazy, inside and out. He placed his hand on the back of Minho’s head just before they pulled away for air, the loss of warmth instantly dawning on him so long and hard and unwanted it _hurt._

“I’ll see you at school, then?” Minho giggled, thumbing over his cheek, shooting interstellar beams in his stare.

“Yeah. I’ll see you then, Minho.” Chan breathed out, stumbling over his words a little in recovery from the impact. _His_ impact.

Minho threw him a final smile, “Good night.” and walked off into the night, an enigma every bit of obscure and intense he was.

Chan didn’t think he knew enough about love to write a song. But Minho came out of nowhere, to a diner in the middle of the night, and suddenly there was only so much paper he could fill.

* * *

Chan remembers _tasting_ Minho for the first time, and seeing the beauty in the mess of inexperience. 

It was quite magical, when he looked back on it.

Three weeks before, Chan would have never imagined he’d grow the balls to ask him about chemistry homework, but there he was— in a cheap, rented, two-sizes-too-large tuxedo that made him sneeze when he dusted it off, and made him look like he should have been waiting tables in the 1940’s— pacing around nervously in front of his door on prom night.

Personally, he thought his hair could have looked better, but Hyunjin mentioned something about open forehead up-do’s being the next thing to socially acceptable for him at the time.

Chan fiddled with the collar of his dress shirt, feeling the air grow thick around him while he waited, running the words through his head.

“How about, ‘Hey! You look great, mate—‘ no, that-that’s terrible. ‘Good evening, I am your escort for the nigh—‘ what the fuck, Chan? I don’t remember this being so hard.” He rolled his eyes to himself, the realization smacking him right in the face just like the wind did.

“Then again I don’t remember successfully asking anyone to prom.”

His eyes darted to the leather watch on his wrist, reading 7:31 pm. “Okay, I’m early, my hair should be fine, and if I’m constantly exhaling through the night maybe this giant potato sack of a suit won’t be too noticeable. Yeah.”

2 minutes in, he was sitting on the steps of the mini staircase to the entrance of the house, chewing on the skin of his bottom lip. The breeze pushed his blonde hair up, then back down, a few strands landing on his forehead.

“‘You look good. You look nice. You look… okay?’ This is so goddamn hard. ‘You look—‘“

“I look what?”

Chan abruptly flew up from his seat, turning to the voice behind him. He remembers he stood there, too pulled in to think of a decent response, but perhaps, not so pulled in that he couldn’t trust his heart to make the one he wanted to.

“.... Magical. You look magical, Minho.” He was quite magical, when he looked back on it.

Minho’s eyes folded up when he giggled in appreciation, rushing out of the house and down the stairs to jump in his hold. Chan caught him gently by the waist, sure his heart skipped a full beat when Minho pressed a quick kiss to his cheek before swiftly grabbing his hand, and heading to his car.

At 9:30, Minho drooped his head heavy onto Chan’s chest, shutting his eyes closed and humming to the faint sound of his heart under the beat of the music and the crowd. Chan, still never quite sure what to do, or how to breathe every time he was with him, decided he would just gently take him in his arms, wrapping them around his waist. 

He swayed the both of them to the slowing beat. They needed no words to think of the same thing.

“You wanna get out of here?” 

“Chan,” Minho giggled breathily into the crook of his neck, before throwing his head back in laughter onto the leather carseat. The night was quiet, and the school parking lot was, fortunately for them, completely empty. 

“I’m sorry! I don’t know what I’m doing!” Chan became a bigger frantic mess in the poor attempt to fit himself into a more comfortable position, or to get Minho to stop laughing at him, or just to do them both before he disappeared into thin air. Luckily for him, Minho knew a good thing or two about helping him out.

“How about you let me?” 

Minho swiftly flipped them over, getting Chan to lie flat on his back on the seat and climbing on top of him after. Chan anxiously, visibly swallowed the lump in his throat, feeling the sweat around his forehead trickle down in slow drops. Under a brief moment of silence, the one thing he could hear was the way his heart thumped louder and faster the closer Minho got to him. If Minho could get his worried, stressed out heart rate down just by looking at him in a minute— why, he could set it running 10 times faster and on flames in a matter of seconds.

A leg first found its place slotted in between two others, and only after a great deal of fierce, uncertain, maybe a little funny silence, did a pair of lips find theirs. 

It started when Minho allowed a notable variety of body parts to meet their soft, longing counterparts from underneath. His one leg carefully pressed up against the line of Chan’s inner thigh, making him try to suppress a groan at the sudden impact. Minho let him know it was okay, walking his fingers up across his chest, and then tracing the shape of his Adam’s apple— something that Chan learned made him crumble, _weak_ and helpless, in all his favorite ways.

Minho’s slender fingers landed at his cheekbones, gently thumbing over the way they protruded, creating one of the most beautiful works of art in the universe. Awe would have been an understatement too heavy. 

“You know, you’re _outstanding_.” Minho whispered after taking in every part of him with his eyes, leaning down and placing his forehead on his, the hot breath of his exhale landing on Chan’s parted lips. He drew spirals against the soft exposed skin over his collarbone.

Chan laughed, the nervousness fading out somehow, never breaking the eye contact that held so much at once. “How do you say that, when you look like the entire galaxy— only you’re even _better_?” 

Minho grinned, letting Chan feel the ghost of his lips against his before he took the liberty of bringing his face up and closer to his with a finger under his chin, sealing the gap that felt like it should have never been there in the first place. Chan fell way too fast, and hard into his touch.

The night was quiet, and the school parking lot was, fortunately for them, completely empty when Chan learned that kissing Minho was like a ride through the exosphere. He thought it was like jumping from a spaceship with no helmet on; falling into an infinite cosmic abyss of only the unknown, _breathless_ , and ultimately, losing himself in the moment.

Minho took Chan’s breath away in ways he did not know were possible, and my God, did he love each one. 

A tongue begged for entrance, into a world he wasn’t quite sure of itself, but one he wanted nothing more than to explore. Chan ran his tongue across the bottom half of Minho’s lips, feeling something of an ignited surge course through his veins like it was on a racetrack. He fought for his way, but burned a tad too much in his heat to win. 

Minho tasted like wildfire, like the hottest, strongest kind of them all. Chan wasn’t too sure what it tasted like, but Minho did. Minho tasted like absolute fire.

When Chan dared to line the insides of this inferno even farther with his tongue he felt the tug on his hair, taking the godforsaken call to pull the boy’s face even deeper and closer into his.

Close enough that the way his heart went thump in his chest against another one was the only thing he could hear for miles. Close enough that he could taste the sweat that lined his jaw and glittered all the way over the veins on his neck. Close enough that everything felt like one, enormous, universal jigsaw puzzle, and each and every piece fit into all the right places.

It might have been his increasingly passionate enthusiasm, but he swore Minho giggled a little in his mouth, and the sound of just that set his heart on flames. 

Somewhere deep and heated into the moment, the fingers that first grasped tightly, maybe a little too shyly, onto thin, white fabric began to claw at bare shoulder, then neck, and when they took a breather, rested carefully on bare torso in all its sincere perfection, drawing circles across dangerous borders. 

There was no clear way of knowing why they dared to cross each one like they have a million times before. Maybe some things just didn’t need any answers.

The rest of the night was a blur. 

Hands found their places on bodies that fit perfectly in place, red and bruised lips tasted like cherry-flavored lip balm and all the comfort in the world, laughter liked to erupt every now and then in smiles pressed against skin turning purple.

And throughout everything else, in the painfully small, terribly uncomfortable, overall, not quite ideal place for a first time, leather-covered backseat of Chan’s car, two hearts beat perfectly in sync like they were always meant to. 

* * *

Chan remembers _holding_ Minho for the first time, and discovering the pieces of the universe he didn’t know were there until he took a closer look. 

The night sky painted itself a symphony of violet and dark blue, lined with faint streaks of white and characters of gold that twinkled brighter when they were scattered. Minho thought it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Chan, however, felt the need to argue with this. It was one look down at the boy resting peacefully on his arm, one hand on top of his chest and the other tracing the stars, his legs tangled clumsily between his own, his hair like vanilla and his soft giggles against his own body, feeling the vibrations reverberate throughout his system, and he’d decided no, this— this was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Minho would quietly hum every time Chan fondly ran his fingers through his hair, feeling his eyelids grow heavier and heavier as he melted into the warmth of it all.

On these nights, Chan kept it to himself that he made sure to get an extra ounce of espresso at least an hour before so he could wait until he drifted off to sleep on top of him, and carry him home on his back. This night might have been just a little different.

A familiar instrumental played off of the radio they brought to the empty beach with them, and Minho decided he would catch Chan off guard by abruptly getting up and out of his hold.

“Chan! They’re going to play my favorite song!” He said, propping himself up with a hand against Chan’s chest. He mumbled a little ‘sorry’ through a fit of giggles when Chan groaned at the force.

“Oh yeah?” Chan grunted when he sat up. “Is this the one you serenade me with in your sleep?” He teased, placing his own hand on top of the one Minho had on the spot in his chest where his heart was.

“Oh god, do I sleep talk again?” Minho’s cheekbones flushed pink in the dark. He hid his face in the crook of Chan’s shoulder.

“It’s the cutest. I love it.” He told him, pressing a soft kiss to the top of his head.

Minho pulled his face out from the spot, his bottom lip sticking out into an incidental pout that almost made Chan go fully insane. They stared into each other’s eyes, mirroring the way they both smiled at the other person like they were the only ones in the world. No one said a word before Minho’s eyes suddenly lit up right in front of him like the stars above them did.

“Dance with me?”

“What?”

“Come on, Chan. We don’t get to do this all the time.” Minho dusted the sand off his jeans, quick to try pulling Chan up by the arm to him outside the picnic blanket they were laying on, and failing. “Dance with me.”

Chan protested heavily, using almost every bit of his strength to make sure he doesn’t budge. “Minho, I— I can’t dance.”

Minho raised an eyebrow, tilting his head to the side, and never letting go of his arm. “I know. I’ll teach you how to.”

It was a game of tug-o-war that felt like it was never going to end, with Chan not willing to risk his dignity and Minho not knowing how to give up.

But if, somewhere in there, Chan took one more stolen look at him, and decided he would fight back a little less harder than he was, he also— kept that to himself.

“You know, I will never win with you.” Chan exhaled heavily in admitted (pretend) defeat.

“No, Bang Chan, you will not.” Minho grinned wide, pulling him farther away into the wider area of the beach by his hand.

_holding on too tight, head up in the clouds._

“It’s really easy. Just follow my lead, okay?”

Chan just nodded, too distracted in his eyes and smile and voice and everything that came with them to actually understand.

“Wrap your arms around my waist— yeah, just like that.” He must have said he wasn’t too prepared to be pulled in closer when Chan gently locked his fingers against his back, trapping him in an embrace that felt like the only kind of safety and home he’d ever need.

Chan stared into him, eyes gentle and smile the same kind of goofy, and adorable, and perfect. “And I’ll wrap my arms around your neck— like this.” Minho carefully rested his arms on his shoulders, bringing his face even closer to his from behind. He had to laugh when Chan’s eyes grew wide at that, just like the first time.

_heaven only knows where you are now._

“Is this it?”

“Just follow me, Chan. I promise you’ll feel it instantly.”

_how do i love? how do i love again?_

Minho placed his forehead on Chan’s, never leaving his gaze, and breathing in his warmth. Chan learned to slowly follow in the tempo and in the way Minho swayed the both of them from side to side.

_how do i trust? how do i trust again?_

The music grew faint and far, and before Chan could say anything about it, he swore he just heard it play even louder than it did when the radio was close, in his own heart, and the one that beat in tune with it. He had a few thoughts.

One was that he wasn’t exactly the biggest of astronomy enthusiasts, and that the stars didn’t grab too much of his attention when they were in the night sky.

Another one was that he might have been looking at it, at everything, all wrong— because the stars he saw in Minho’s eyes, the sun he saw in his smile, and the rest of the cosmos that clearly had their favorites, were nothing like the ones he thought he knew enough about. They were enchanting.

Lee Minho was enchanting.

_i stay up all night, tell myself i’m alright— baby, you’re just harder to see than most._

“Good?” Minho whispered against his lips, his eyes fluttering closed and his eyelashes brushing past Chan’s face, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

“Yeah. You are breathing heavy on my face, though.” Chan quietly laughed when Minho did, raising his head up and closer so their noses were touching, and it was almost impossible to tell them apart.

The corners of Minho’s lips formed a smile less than a dreadful inch away from Chan’s, his steps light and his hold tightening. “And you love it, though.”

“No, I love you.”

_i put the record on, wait ’til i hear our song. every night, i’m dancing with your ghost,_

Chan would have loved to believe it was the way he dropped his laughter to tell him the only words he wanted to say, in the only way he knew how back then, that got Minho to stop dead in the rhythm, and pull his lips onto his own.

And that it was in that exact, paradisiacal moment he never wanted to end, when Chan realized Minho was absolutely right. He felt it _instantly_.

Minho was the only one in the world. Nothing, and no one, could ever compare.

_every night i’m dancing, with your ghost._

* * *

Chan remembers _losing_ Minho, and, somewhere along the way, parts of himself forever.

The sky was a dark, depressing grey when it happened. Thunder roared from outside, and Chan took a sip out of his coffee cup, noticing Minho hadn’t even touched the food he ordered for him, or spoken a single word since he arrived, half an hour after the time they agreed to. Chan chose not to think about it.

He placed the cup down, leaning forward to try and lighten the mood, grinning when Minho finally cracked a smile of his own before drinking out of his coffee.

Maybe if Chan paid just a little more attention back then, though, he would have seen it was _forced_.

Minho stepped swift out of the cafe first, pushing his hands into the pockets of his jacket and not looking back. Chan was standing at the counter, waiting for the sandwich he didn’t finish and decided to take home, and anxiously tapping his foot in rhythm with his speeding heartbeat as he turned his head from table to window.

Fortunately for him, he managed to catch up with the boy just fine— which was also how he thought everything would be at the time.

“Hey, I got you your sandwich.” He tried to loop his arm around his waist, but Minho pushed him off, walking out of his hold. Chan thought he just heard his heart drop into his stomach.

“Chan,” Minho took a deep breath. “I think we need to stop.”

“Hm?” Chan asked, adjusting the packaging. “Stop what? If you want to go home, you know I can take you—“

“This! Whatever this is,” He stopped dead in his tracks, exhaling too hard. “Whatever this was. We need to stop this.”

Of every heart-racing comment, of every subtle observation, of every sincere truth— of everything Minho could have ever said to him in his life, this was the one he would never have been prepared to hear.

Chan bit on the inside of his cheek before throwing his shoulders up in a scoff. A bitter, disbelieving scoff.

“Sorry, you… want us to stop this?” He demanded, louder, breath weighing heavier with each closer step. “Now what on earth could you possibly be talking about? What is this?”

Minho turned around to face him, fingernails digging into his palms at the sides, tears he tried to force in spilling down in streams and dripping right off his chin. “This is what it always was, Chan. A mistake.”

The words fell off like poison. Every part of his body trembled when they were out, and the shot of the wind at his skin turned his face to fire. Minho could not hold his tears back, but all Chan saw was the audacity. The way his teeth pushed rough against each other could have gotten him to bleed.

“A mistake?”

“We should have never met, Chan.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? Did none of that— any of that, mean anything to you? Where is this even coming from?”

“I’m sorry,”

“Do not,” Chan held an open palm up in front of his face, Minho stopping in his sentence. His other hand folded into a fist so tight his fingers almost broke. “—tell me you’re sorry. Tell me why. Tell me why on earth, out of fucking nowhere, you’re calling everything a mistake. Tell me why you’re calling us a mistake! Minho!”

“I know, I know you told me you loved me. I know—“

“You never said it back.”

Minho dared to look back into his eyes again, his heart rate spiking dangerously for the wrong reasons.

“Everyday, I thank you, for giving me some of the best memories of my life. I thank you, Chan, for making me feel things I never thought I would again. For making my skin feel more like skin. For making me find a home in you.”

Chan stared daggers, burning and sharp, into his soul. “But?”

“But if anyone deserved to hear the rest of the words, to discover the rest of your heart, to take one look at you and know exactly what it feels like to be _loved_ — it’s not _me._ It’s not me, Chan.”

“What the fuck? Of course, it’s you! Who else would it be?” He yelled at the sky, water pouring out of his own eyes in falls.

“I’m so sorry,”

“Stop apologizing! If you were sorry, you wouldn’t be doing this to me!”

A crash of thunder boomed from above, and clouds of somber grey began to form a roof over their heads, as if on cue. Minho looked up at them, then at Chan, then ran at full speed to hold him and feel the warmth he would never find anywhere else, selfishly, for the last time.

Chan never expected the hardest fight he would ever have to face in his life was the one where he believed he had to let go for himself, but by any, and all means, could not find it in him to even try.

So Minho helped him out with that, too.

Minho wiped a teardrop away from under his eye, “Goodbye, Chan. Please don’t come looking for me.” before pulling his jacket over his head, and running off. Forever, this time.

The sky was a dark, depressing grey when it happened. Thunder roared from everywhere, and the water poured down on him with no mercy, soaking him to the bone. The paper bag with the carefully wrapped sandwich in it dropped to the ground, and Chan did not move an inch.

If there was something he remembered from when it happened, it was that he believed his heart was always going to be full, until the day it was not.

* * *

“Chan?”

“Hm?”

“It’s… it’s a Sunday night.” 

Chan groggily pushed himself up from the desk in his studio he fell asleep on a few hours back, reaching over for his phone. The screen flashed a vivid white that burned his eyes a little, reading 9:07 pm on Sunday, October 25.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Silence filled the room, only the hum of the AC and the sound of water dripping into a bucket resonated through the walls.

“You know, you don’t have to go.” Changbin exhaled, leaning against the doorframe.

Chan sucked his teeth in, blinking a few times. He checked his phone one more time, a feeling he knew all too well clouding his eyesight.

“So, how far is the beach from here?”

The night sky painted itself an orchestra of darkness. Streaks of gold and sliver decided not to show tonight, and the stars were nowhere to be found. Chan threw his head up, half a smile of anything but happy crossing his lips.

He pushed his free hand into his jacket pockets, breathing out a burst of fog into the cold air of the nighttime.

The sand wasn’t very soft where he stood, several meters away from the water, and the breeze was a temperature not too welcoming. Still, Chan carefully layered a blanket over the ground, placing a radio and himself on top of it.

“And for our last song on this beautiful, although freezing, Sunday night, how about a crowd favorite?”

Chan glanced at the radio when the music spilled out, instantly feeling the lump in his throat grow about 10 times thicker. He shut his eyes tight, gripping forcefully onto the sleeves of his shirt.

_never got the chance, to say our last goodbye,_

The tears didn’t come out, though. He’d gotten too used to it a year ago he felt untouchable now.

_i gotta move on, but it hurts to try._

Even if the place made him feel like he was losing oxygen different from how he took it away back then, even if the song and all the memories it held felt like acid to the touch, even if it was a beautiful, although freezing, Sunday night by the ocean and the only thing he could think about was how pathetic he must’ve looked embracing open air, pretending he was there.... he told himself he was alright.

Chan was alright.

He would be. He had to be.

The pain hit him in ways he didn’t think it would, the pain made him wish he disappeared. But the pain kept him alive— because the pain was the last he had of him.

Every night he could Chan visited their favorite spot, lost in the song of the sea and the call of the sky. And each one hurt the same.

But Chan was always going to remember what it was like to _love_ Minho, even when all he had now was his ghost.

**Author's Note:**

> happy minchantober! i hope this didn't feel as rushed as i was while writing it ;-;
> 
> the song minho hums to at the diner is "closest i get" by Katie Herzig, and the song at the beach, the one this story's inspired by, is "dancing with your ghost" by Sasha Sloan. you should give them a listen!
> 
> come bully me on twitter! @1025wrld i write socmed aus too <3


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